8.24.2005

Abundant Linkage 4

Welcome to another fantastic edition of Abundant Linkage, where I -- your host, Ward -- will dispense to you all a multitude of glorious links and time-wasters. All thanks to the wonderous joy of the internet. Shall we begin? Yes, let's.

(First of all, my thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Joe Ranft, Pixar's great story man, who died tragically in an automoblie accident last week. He was a very influential guy, not just within the walls of Pixar, but to many who had the great opportunity to know him, as well as be taught by him. His presence will be sorely missed.)

Leif Peng is an illustrator who's accumulated a rather large collection of images from magazines, books, and newspapers printed during the glory days of the 20th century illustrator. The collection is so impressive that he decided to share the wealth to a few of his colleagues via email one day and the response was overwhelming. Now titled, Today's Inspiration, Leif sends one image a day to a growing list of fellow illustrators, artists, art directors, or anyone who loves this sort of thing. Yes, I fall into that catagory. Ever since I subscribed to his list, I've learned so much about many of the greats of that time: Al Parker, Bob Peak, Bob Hilbert, Robert Fawcett, just to name a few. Mostly focusing on a particular artist for the week, he'll sometimes do a theme. Currently the theme this week is "Summer." Many thanks to Leif for his exhaustive work in scanning all these images, as well as being so generous in sharing his collection. The images are very good quality, by the way.

I've updated the right column again to include a new catagory: Retro Minded. I'm a big lover of anything vintage, especially from the mid-20th century, if you haven't already guessed. So, it just seemed right for me to have a catagory just for links that focus on that particular era, or might take a heart-warming and half-serious look back at that time. A few to check out:

Conelrad is a great informational as well as fun site about the creepy days of the Cold War. From atomic bombs to fallout shelters, from Red scares to National Security, you name it -- it's there. Also be sure to check out behind the scenes on creating the "Citizen Kane of Civil Defense," Bert the Turtle -- the host of the fun-for-kids educational short film, Duck and Cover. A very interesting read about how to delicately approach the subject of complete atomic destruction while simply cowering under tables, all in a fun way for kids to understand -- complete with an animated turtle as their guide. Fun! To download this bizarre nugget from our past, you can download it HERE.

I just love the look and feel of Retro Lounge, a site with links aimed at the past. Just sit back and enjoy the retro goodness.

A couple of new blog links:

I swear that Matt, of Scrubbles, is my internet twin. He's even my age. He and I share so many similarites when it comes to collecting and retro interests, it's uncanny. Funny guy, too.

Poppy is headed up by Jan, a designer in Vancouver, BC. She never fails to disappoint when it comes to finding great links. And she posts frequently, too, so she's got that going for her.

One of the more interesting blogs I've encountered, The Known Universe has such compelling content -- thanks to poignant photography and great writing -- that I find myself yearning for New York City in a completely new way. Thanks for that, Jamie.

Cartoons and Caricatures and Funny Cute are two great sketchblogs from former Spümcø employees. Great insight into working on caricatures and trying to figure out subjects' quirks and features.

Denis Goulet has changed the url to his blog, "Mes vendredis..." You can check out the new link HERE. If you recall, I mentioned Denis' work and blog in an earlier edition of Abundant Linkage.

Various oddities:

Savannah College of Art & Design has now opened a satellite campus in Midtown, Atlanta, called SCAD-Atlanta. And almost immediately announced that it will merge with the nearby competing (and long-standing) art school, Atlanta College of Art (ACA), creating this blob-like art school that could either be a great benefit to Atlanta's art and animation community, or become this faceless monster that could deeply affect a long-running art establishment that included the Woodruff Arts Center and High Museum of Art. We'll have to wait and see, I guess. Nothing like art drama.

One of my dreams has always been to animate a movie title sequence. I'm a big fan of this sort of mini-movie within a movie, as it incorporates several of my loves: movies, animation and typography. Not necessarily in that order. Anyway, there's a site that complied all the movie titles that the great designer legend Saul Bass created. Very cool. My only problem is that there are no Quicktime movies to view. Just stills. Oh well. Better than nothing.

A cool article on retro-styled movie titles can be found HERE. Another interesting read on the retro movie title thing is found over at One Plus One Equals Three, a design blog. Good readin'.

all hail the king of links... you know, if I discover some obscure, marvelous link that you have no prior knowledge of and then you end up loving it... well, I know I have struck gold. that has been my personal mission these days.

glad to see you posted a link to poppy's blog... she rocks the proverbial casbah and totally deserves the nod. I love her. and of course, I also have so much love for the known universe... one of my absolute favorites. global graphica is of the dopeness, too. and saul bass? yes.

Ha ha, I knew someone might bring this up. No, see, with almost all of my posts, I start them way in advance, and work on them, add links, etc. throughout the week. Especially with the Abundant Linkage posts, as sometimes I want to keep adding more stuff that I find and just add it onto the post. I think I had the initial post started about three weeks ago for this one.

Sometimes I write something immediately, which was the case with the Third shift post. I added the image the following day.

Thanks for the links! Conelrad is one of those brilliant, huge sites I've never had enough time to explore fully. I developed a love for atomic age stuff after seeing that great doc 'Atomic Cafe', which I recommend to everyone.

That also reminds me of, and pardon me if someone's mentioned it here before, a great animated film I downloaded from the Prelinger Archives called 'A is for Atom'http://www.archive.org/details/isforAto1953